One of the most important aspects of making your own wine is keeping things clean and sanitary.
It’s important because wine is like a living thing. It needs to be protected from wild molds, bacteria, etc. Without proper care your wine can become overtaken by these foreign organisms and eventually spoiled.
Using a wine making sanitizer to cleanse your wine equipment is often overlooked or treated lightly by many home wine makers, and understandably so. It takes time and effort to be sanitary. Simply put: it’s extra work! Who wants to spend their time sanitizing their wine making equipment when all they really want to do is make some wine!
We understand. That’s why we set out to develop a product that addresses both of these issues: the ‘sanitizing’ and the ‘work’. What we’ve come up with is a wine sanitizer called ‘Basic A’ . It’s a very quick and effective sanitizer. But even more importantly, it’s very simple to use and requires very little effort on your part.
Basic A is not a chlorine. It’s an oxygenating cleanser. What this mean is that all the sanitizing is done while the wine equipment is air-drying. It’s actually the evaporation of the solution that causes the sanitizing action to happen. It’s a no-rinse cleanser.
Basic A wine making sanitizer is safe. So safe and eco-friendly that you don’t need to worry about any residues being left behind… because there aren’t any!
It works on any non-porous surface: glass, plastics, metals, porcelain and others. Just give Basic A one minute of contact time with your: fermenters, carboys, bottles, air-locks and other wine making materials, then allow to air-dry. No rinsing is required! It doesn’t get any easier than that.
Basic A wine making sanitizer comes in an 8 ounce jar that is sufficient for making 10 gallons of solution. Complete directions are included. Just dissolve 1 tablespoon to each gallon of warm water and you’re all set to go.
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Ed Kraus is a 3rd generation home brewer/winemaker and has been an owner of E. C. Kraus since 1999. He has been helping individuals make better wine and beer for over 25 years.

I was talking to one of our customers on the phone, yesterday. We got to talking about the different homemade wine kits he’s made over the last few years. He mentioned how he used to make wine using ingredient kits from our European Select and Legacy brands, but now he only likes to make wine from our top-end kits such as Cellar Craft Showcase.
He was thinking about making wine from fresh grapes this year and he wanted to know which I thought would make a better wine: our top-end wine ingredient kits or wine he made from fresh grapes?
I told him the answer’s simple. As an individual winemaker, you will almost always get a better wine using our top-end homemade wine kits. There are several reasons for this, but the most important and basic one has to do with the grape. A common mantra throughout the wine industry is:
No wine can be better than the grapes used to make it.
Or, as some people like to put it, you can’t make a silk purse out of a sow’s ear. If you have mediocre grapes, the best you can hope for is mediocre wine. Only stellar grapes are capable of making a stellar wine and that’s what you get with our top-end wine ingredient kits.
Unless you are fortunate enough to live in Napa or Sonoma, the grapes that are going to be available to you are most likely not going to be of the same caliber as grapes used to make our high-end homemade wine kits. Although, I am certain that there are many exceptions to this, the fact remains that the odds are way out of your favor when going on the open market to find wine grapes.
The grapes used in our high-end wine ingredient kits such as: Cellar Craft Showcase or Atmosphere, are grown in select regions of the world. They come from the same fields used to produce many high-dollar wines found on the commercial market.
I told him that this doesn’t mean he shouldn’t make wine from fresh grapes. The experience is wonderful and it’s a time that can be shared with family and friend. Wine making from fresh grapes has it’s rewards regardless of the quality. All this really means is don’t expect to make a killer wine with everyday wine grapes… expect everyday wine.
Here’s what the difference between wine ingredient kits and fresh grapes boils down to: If you’re looking for ultimate quality, go with the homemade wine kits. If your looking for the ultimate experience go for the fresh grapes.
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Ed Kraus is a 3rd generation home brewer/winemaker and has been an owner of E. C. Kraus since 1999. He has been helping individuals make better wine and beer for over 25 years.

This is the last part of a 4 part series on knowing when to pick your grapes. Part 1 went over the importance of knowing when to harvest. Part 2 covered how to take the readings from the grapes and what they mean. Part 3 went over what kind of readings to expect.

What’s One To Do?
Unless you have some high-dollar real estate in California wine country, it’s not likely you will hit the best Brix, pH and TA readings all at the same time. Some years the climate will just not cooperate, and you will most likely need to make compromises.
Of course, you can get lucky in a particular year with just the right weather at the right time, but counting on getting lucky is a fool’s bet. You must learn to make the optimal best out of the meteorological cards you are being dealt.
A good rule of thumb is to try to harvest when the ratio of Brix to TA is between 31:1 and 34:1. This will always get you a good compromise between alcohol content and tartness.
As an example, lets say you do a titration and discover that the TA is .85% – still a little high – and your refractometers Brix reading is 23. This gives you a Brix to TA ratio of about 27:1. You get this by taking the Brix and dividing it by the TA (23/.85)… not time to harvest.
Two weeks later you take another reading with your titration kit and get a TA of .73% (a little lower) and your refractometers reading says a Brix of 24 (a little higher). These readings get you a ratio of about 33:1… time to harvest.
The only exception to this general rule has to do with pH. If the pH looks like it is going to go out of ideal range, then go ahead and harvest right away. The pH getting out of range trumps the Brix to TA ratio. This means for white wines, if it looks like it’s going to go higher than of pH 3.3. then harvest. For reds, if it goes higher than 3.5, then harvest.
Proper pH is more important than Brix and TA simply because you can’t directly adjust pH later on without effecting the tartness of the wine, but you can directly adjust Brix and TA without effecting the pH too much.

The Wine Hydrometer
In part one of this four part series I mentioned that a wine hydrometer should be purchased, just as a way of double-checking your refractometers reading before actually picking the grapes.
So it’s late in the season. You’ve been taking all your readings, and all the numbers have finely come into their best alignment, and you have come to the conclusion that its time to harvest. Stop! Now should be the time to take a reading with your hydrometer just as a means of making sure it is time to pick.
To do this you will need to crush up a couple of handfuls of grapes taken randomly throughout the vineyard and extract the juice. You need enough juice to get the hydrometer to float. A hydrometer jar is good in this regard because it is tall and slender and does not require a large amount of grape juice to get the wine hydrometer off the bottom.
If your hydrometer’s reading taken from grapes throughout the vineyard matches your refractometer’s reading taken from one grape, then you’re ready to harvest. This is when to pick your grapes to make wine. Get to pickin’ and crushin’.

Read More >>
Part I: The Importance Of Timing
Part II: Taking Reading
Part III: What Readings To Expect
Part IV: The Big Compromise
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Ed Kraus is a 3rd generation home brewer/winemaker and has been an owner of E. C. Kraus since 1999. He has been helping individuals make better wine and beer for over 25 years.

This is part 3 of a 4 part series about when to pick your grapes. Part 1 went over the importance of knowing when to harvest. Part 2 covered how to take the readings from the grapes and what they mean. 

Ideal Readings
Here’s a quick run-down of what would be optimum readings you would want from the grapes for producing most wines. As an amateur vintner these are the numbers you should be striving to achieve.
The refractometers sugar reading should be around 20 to 26 Brix. This will potentially produce a wine between 10% to 13% alcohol. White wines should lean more towards the 20-22 Brix range, whereas Reds should be closer to 24 to 26 Brix. Red’s have more flavor, so they can handle more alcohol and still stay in balance.
As for pH readings with a digital pH meter, you would like your whites wines to reach 3.2 to 3.3. Remember the scale is reverse. You’ll be starting out earlier in the year around 2.8. You would like Red wines to be somewhere around 3.4 to 3.5. From a preservation standpoint, Reds don’t need to be as acidic as Whites because they have more alcohol to ward off any microbial growth.
Titratable acidity (TA) readings, as measured by a titration kit, should be .65% to .75% for white wines and .60% to .70% for reds. Again, the difference in these two is stated in the reason above.

The Reality Of Readings
The above readings would be great if you could attain each of them every year, but the reality is that in most parts of the U.S. hitting all these numbers in the same year is a struggle. You can plant in good soil and cultivate with care, but all that can be for not if the climate does not cooperate.
In cooler climates the refractometers reading quite often never reaches the appropriate range before the weather becomes too cool. In other areas pH may become to high before the refractometers readings can become adequate. Or, it may rain too much right before harvest, causing the grapes to plump up too much. This can dilute the sugar, acid and flavor to disastrous levels.
It’s only in regions where temperatures are moderate enough to provide a long growing season with moderate rain that grape growers have very little problems achieving these numbers. Such is the case of the inner valleys of California: Napa, Sonoma, etc. These areas benefit from the even, Mediterranean climate that the Pacific winds provide.
For other regions it is usually a compromise to get these three numbers into alignment. And, that is what we will discuss in the next part of this series.

Read More >>

Part I: The Importance Of Timing
Part II: Taking Reading
Part III: What Readings To Expect
Part IV: The Big Compromise
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Ed Kraus is a 3rd generation home brewer/winemaker and has been an owner of E. C. Kraus since 1999. He has been helping individuals make better wine and beer for over 25 years.

This is part 2 of a 4 part series on when to pick your grapes. Part 1 went over why timing is so important.
As the grapes start to become fully mature what you’ll want to do is take periodic readings. First with your refractometer, then with the pH meter and then finally with the titration kit. These three readings will be considered all together to determine when to pick your grapes.

Readings With Refractometers
Refractometers will give you a reading in a scale called Brix. This scale simply represents the amount of sugar in the grape juice as a percentage. For example, if your refractometer is reading 20 Brix, this means the grape juice is 20% sugar by weight.
As the grape matures the sugar percentage rises. This is important because during a fermentation the yeast turns about half of the sugar into alcohol. So the more sugar the grape juice has the more alcohol it can make. The other half of the sugar is turned into carbon dioxide gas (carbonation) and dissipates from the fermentation. In our example, this would mean that if you have a Brix of 20 when picking your wine grapes, you would have enough sugar to potentially make 10% alcohol.
Using refractometers to take Brix readings is very simple and instantaneous. All that is needed is a drop or two of the juice squeezed from the wine grape. Place the drops on the glass prism of the refractometer and then close the cover plate. Look into the lens while pointing it to a good light source, preferably the sun. You may have to adjust the lens to bring the Brix scale into focus. Wherever a brightness change occurs across the scale on the lens, that is the Brix of your wine.

Readings With pH Meters

Now it’s time to take a pH reading with your pH meter. What pH is telling you is the total strength of the acidity in the grape juice. As the grapes mature their acidic strength becomes weaker and weaker. If it becomes too weak then there is an increased potential for microbial action, spoilage. Having a low acidic strength can also weaken a wine’s color richness and lower its fruity impression.
The pH scale is a backwards scale. What this means is that the higher the number, the lower the acidity. So it’s important to understand that even though the acidic strength is weakening over time, you should be experiencing higher pH readings as time goes on. A typical pH reading might be 3.2.
To take a reading you will need to squeeze the juice from a hand-full of grapes into a cup or similar. The idea being, you need enough grape juice to completely submerge the entire probe end of the pH meter. Give it a few seconds, and you should get a reading on the display.

Readings With Titration Kits
A titration kit measures the total volume of acid in the wine regardless of its strength. It will give a reading as percentage of mass. While this reading does play a roll in the stability of the wine, it is more directly tied to the flavor of the wine. To much acid, the wine is too tart. Not enough acid, the wine if flat and lifeless. A typical reading might be .70%. This means the acid in the wine is 7 tenths of a percent by mass.
To take a reading with the titration kit you can use the same juice sample used to take the pH reading. Basically, what you’ll be doing is adding a solution to the wine until it changes color. By knowing how much solution it took to change the color of the wine sample, you can determine the wine’s total volume of acid.

Read More >>
Part I: The Importance Of Timing
Part II: Taking Reading
Part III: What Readings To Expect
Part IV: The Big Compromise
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Ed Kraus is a 3rd generation home brewer/winemaker and has been an owner of E. C. Kraus since 1999. He has been helping individuals make better wine and beer for over 25 years.

Knowing the optimum time to pick your grapes for wine is a crucial skill that must be mastered before any vineyard can become successful, yet the “knowing when” seems to be the one thing that eludes many amateur vintners.
What’s At Stake
The timing of the harvest plays a serious roll in the resulting wine. Basic features such as flavor, acidity, body, color, as well as stability are all tied to this decision. One should think of the harvest timing as the first decision to be made in the wine making process.
The Goal
Grapes are no different than most fruits on the face of this earth. As they mature through the growing season, they go from small and tart to big and sweet. In general, we want the grapes to be as sweet as possible but without risking the loss of too much acidity or acidic strength.
The sugars are what the yeast ferment into alcohol. The more sugars there are in the grape juice the more alcohol you will have from the fermentation, so we always want more sugar. But we also don’t want the acidic concentration and strength to deplete too much. This will cause the wine to be less stable and less likely to be able to protect itself from flavor deterioration, loss of color intensity, and potentially spoilage. We also don’t want the wine to be too acidic. This will make the wine too tart or sharp in flavor.
The Tools
As a vintner there are three key pieces of equipment that are necessary to determine the when to pick your grapes: a refractometer, an acid titration kit, and a pH meter. Refractometers measure the amount of sugar in the juice. An acid titration kit measures the amount of the acid in a juice. The pH meter measures the strength of the acid in the grape juice.
I would also strongly recommend getting a wine hydrometer for doing a final check of sugar levels before actually picking the grapes. The hydrometer actually floats in the juice to determine the Brix level. Having a wine hydrometer will also be handy later on when you’re actually making the wine.
Read More >>
Part I: The Importance Of Timing
Part II: Taking Reading
Part III: What Readings To Expect
Part IV: The Big Compromise
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Ed Kraus is a 3rd generation home brewer/winemaker and has been an owner of E. C. Kraus since 1999. He has been helping individuals make better wine and beer for over 25 years. #picking

Using a wine acid test kit is fairly straight forward. The instructions that come with the kit are easy to follow, and the process is somewhat simple. Where things can get confusing is learning how to interpret the readings. When using the acid test kit you are looking for a color change in the wine sample as you add solution to it. Determining when that color change occurs can take some practice.
With that in mind, here are 7 quick tips for using your acid test kit. These are tips on how to use an acid testing kit so that you can get the most accurate readings:

1. Play Around With The Acid Test Kit Before You Actually Need It
   The acid test kit will provide you with about 50 tests, so you can afford to play around with it a bit and get use to how it works. If you don’t have a wine you want to test, you can test Welch’s concord grape juice. We already know from experience that you should be getting a reading of .67% with this juice.

2. Use A White Background When Looking For A Color Change
   Look at the wine or wine sample with a white background behind it and in plenty of light. A sheet of paper or a white wall will work fine. Having a white background will help you to determine more clearly if the wine is experiencing a color change.

3. Use A Second Sample As A Comparison
   Having a second test tube filled with the same wine sample will allow you to see more accurately if the wine is changing color or not by comparing the two. Only one test tube comes with the acid test kit, but we have additional glass test tubes you can order separately.

4. Make Sure The Color Change Is Through The Entire Sample
   One common rooky-mistake when using the acid test kit is not waiting until the entire sample changes color. When you first add drops of the reagent you will get streaking. This is streaks of color changes that are noticeable in portions of the wine sample. This does not count as a color change. Agitate the sample until the streaking goes away. Then see if you can notice a color change in the entire wine sample.

5. Heavily Colored Red Wines May Need To Be Diluted With Distilled Water
   Some wines are so darkly colored that you can’t tell if a color change has occurred or not when using the acid test kit. In these situations you will want to dilute the wine sample(s) with water. But not just any water. It needs to be distilled so that the alkalinity of the water does not affect your reading.

6. Calculate The Acidity By The Amount Of Reagent Used, Not The Amount Left In The Syringe
   This is a good one. Many times we have run across this error. The amount of acidity in the wine is calculated by how much reagent it took to change the wine’s color. This is measured by a graduated syringe. You slowly add regent to the wine sample until the color changes. Now you need to know how much reagent you used, but many first-timers will do their calculation based on the amount left in the syringe. Be sure you do your calculation based on the amount of reagent you used. Forget about what’s left in the syringe.

7. Only Use The Acid Test Kit Either Before Fermentation Or Before Bottling
   This tip is pretty straight-forward. You do not want to test for acidity while there is CO2 from the fermentation still in the wine. Doing so will throw your reading off. The most convenient times for this is before the fermentation takes place, or before bottling the wine. It is important to de-gas the wine because some residual CO2 will stay saturated into the wine until it is persuaded to leave.

BONUS TIP!
Don’t Be Afraid To Test The Wine More Than Once
I have found that it is faster to do two tests than it is to do one. It can get pretty monotonous adding little drops of reagent to the wine and waiting for a color change. Yet, that’s what it takes to get an accurate acidity reading. It can take several minutes to get to the color change, and by then you might not even be paying that much attention.
So here’s what I do. I do a quick acid test, first. I put reagent in the sample fairly quickly and look for the color change. All I am trying to do with this first test is to find out ‘about‘ how much reagent it takes to get to the color change. Once I know the ‘about‘, I get a new wine sample and start all over again. I add reagent to just short of where I previously got my color change. Now I add a drop of reagent at a time, and wait for the color change.
There you have it: the 7+ tip on how to use an acid test kit for wine. They are basically some insight that I have learned the hard way of the years. Now you know them too!
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Ed Kraus is a 3rd generation home brewer/winemaker and has been an owner of E. C. Kraus since 1999. He has been helping individuals make better wine and beer for over 25 years.